Goodbye, Binders! The Better Staff Checklist Experience

This blog is from a recent HealthStream webinar titled “Goodbye, Binders! The Better Checklist Experience.” The webinar was moderated by HealthStream’s Jill Terry, Product Marketing Manager, Clinical Staff Development and featured Karen Sutton, Senior Solution Executive, Clinical Staff Development. 

Supporting nurses and other staff with organizational processes is important. It is an essential step to building confidence in clinical quality and skills and can help eliminate variations in practice. However, actually executing on that support can be challenging. HealthStream has combined technology and automation in a solution that can help by eliminating paper-based systems such as binders and help your organization move to a system in which staff and leaders can have real confidence.

Over the past 30 years, HealthStream has been able to offer solutions in a variety of areas including resuscitation, quality and compliance, and clinical development. Recently, HealthStream has expanded their services to be able to offer scheduling and capacity management through the acquisition of organizations such as Nurse Grid, SkillSoft and Shift Wizard. These solutions offer organizations the benefit of reducing administrative work, as well as costs in addition to offering easy access to data.

Binders – Not the Best Solution

The process for documenting the professional journey from novice to expert for clinicians is complex, and it can quickly become unmanageable for those organizations that are choosing to use paper and binders for this purpose. Preparing for a survey typically means hours of time spent updating and photo-copying employee records. The process is costly and cumbersome, but even more worrisome – the process is error-prone. In addition, paper can be damaged or become lost, making audits a nerve-wracking experience.

The Better Checklist Experience

Sutton emphasized that “HealthStream’s Checklist can help organizations standardize the entire writing and updating process while minimizing risk by having up-to-date information for every employee and every process.” Sutton also shared that because the system is customizable, organizations can literally do anything that they had previously been doing on paper.

HealthStream’s Checklist can help your organization to:

• Provide high-quality care by ensuring that all clinical staff are using the same processes
• Facilitate and streamline a rapid onboarding process that will better support new graduates and new employees through the use of e-task lists including hyperlink functions
• Reduce turnover by helping employees get up to speed faster
• Create your own checklists for a wide range of use cases that can include up to ten custom responses
• Ensure high-reliability and confidence through the use of standardized sets of checklists
• Make validating skills more efficient for preceptors through the use of mobile tools that make it easier to validate skills at the bedside

“Checklist also supports the validation of competency measures, which makes validation and documentation for regulatory agencies easier and much more efficient,” said Sutton.

Better Checklist - Better Outcomes

The process for standardizing and documenting complex processes in a healthcare organization is essential, but an accurate and efficient means of accomplishing this has been elusive. Checklist can improve outcomes by ensuring standardized processes, which results in consistent, high-quality care for patients.

Sutton shared that Kettering Health Network, an Ohio non-profit network of 8 acute care hospitals and 120 outpatient facilities, had experienced an increasing number of central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs). The number had actually doubled in one year resulting in the formation of a task force and numerous performance-improvement activities. “The task force was able to leverage Checklist and the HealthStream Learning Center to educate staff and ensure consistent practice across thousands of clinicians and multiple locations,” said Sutton. She went on to share that they were able to use Checklist to standardize nursing care and validate competency through the easy-to-use mobile app. These activities resulted in a dramatic 90% decrease in CLABSIs over a 16-month period.